It's Probably More Like A Potty Break Than An Actual Exit

That's some strategy President Obama has in Libya. Unfortunately, it depends on other countries cooperating and showing some backbone. Here's the truth that even the NY Times now admits: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/world/africa/25policy.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper

The summary according to all the latest reports:

• First we were going to establish a no-fly zone and then turn protection of the airspace over to other NATO and/or UN nations.
• The actual operations turned out to involve bombing various of Libya's ground forces and equipment ... attacking troops from the air.
• The original 'exit strategy' sold to The People: we'll withdraw from combat operations within days, after securing the Libyan airspace.
• NATO's response: bicker, bicker, bicker. Now refusing to do much of anything. Other NATO countries finally agree to take over control of the airspace. WOW, impressive, eh? Now that Gadhafi has NO air force to speak of, just how hard a job IS that?
• Yesterday NATO finally agreed to take over the airspace control but won't attack ground forces. Guess who gets to continue doing that? The only country left in the world that has some backbone, the USA.
• NOW what's America's exit strategy looking like? We'll continue attacking Libyan government ground forces until it doesn't need to be done any more. When will that be? Who knows? President Obama and Secretary Clinton surely don't know. If you think they do you're being unrealistic.

Our exit strategy has devolved from "turning it over to NATO in days, not weeks" to "we'll turn over just the easy stuff to NATO in days but we'll keep doing the hardest work remaining for as long as it needs to be done". Now that's decisive leadership. President Obama is getting a lesson about other countries' spinelessness that he apparently didn't pay attention to in history classes, to the extent they teach real history at Harvard.

Bottom line folks. we aren't exiting this war any time soon although it looks like we might take a bit of a potty break.